Toronto Raptors GM Masai Ujiri Responds to Danny Ferry’s Comments

Ujiri highlights Luol Deng’s numerous contributions as an African basketball star, and Ujiri hopes that Ferry can learn more about his beloved continent and its people, and calls for forgiveness. Below is a snippet of the piece:

I spoke to Danny myself about this. He started off by apologizing to Luol. He apologized to me and apologized for any insult he’d offered to African people in general. He explained the incident as best he could to me. There are some things about that conversation I would like to keep between the two of us, but I came away feeling like I’d understood what he had to say.

I have no idea what is happening in the Atlanta Hawks organization, but I do know how the scouting world works. We all have different ways of sharing information about players and different vocabularies to do so. It crossed a line here. […] That said, we are all human. We are all vulnerable. We all make mistakes. […] You discover a person’s true character in their ability to learn from and then move on from those mistakes. One of the truly important things we must learn is how to forgive.

Danny’s mistake will remain tied to him for a long time. What he’s said can’t be unsaid, but we must measure his heart. If he has made an honest, isolated error, we should forgive and move on. […] I spoke to Luol on Thursday morning. The first thing he said to me was, “We have to figure out a way to make sure this doesn’t hurt other African players.”